The magic quadrant matrix strikes again for health tech and investment potential

[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Medical-social-quadrant-box.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Deceptively simple, the quadrant matrix can make sense out of actions and decisions. As a management tool, it can help you prioritize what is most urgent and important, or how to vary your supervisory/coaching style based on the person’s skill and will levels.

Here we see the magic box used by Krishna Yeshwant, MD, a doctor and investor with GV, Alphabet’s venture firm, to sort out all those Next Revolutions in Health Care. The factors that Dr. Yeshwant uses pertain to the end user’s medical and social needs, often called social determinants of health (SDH). Both are meshed, whether in an active older veteran who lives alone in a rural area but manages his diabetes well, or in a homeless substance user in a city with multiple medical conditions.

Most non-medical entrepreneurs prefer to develop tech and services for people like them with low medical/low social needs, such as virtual doctor apps, concierge primary care, and wellness apps. It’s a crowded quadrant and perhaps is over-served. Those with a medical background appear to gravitate to the diagonal quadrant–high medical/high social needs, such as those targeted to the ‘underserved’ with diabetes or high-need care model management, such as Aledade and Iora Health. Where does the investment money go? Their money goes to companies which have developed high medical need therapeutics such as expensive treatments for cancer, neatly avoiding those complex social factors.

What is missing: innovation in low medical/high social needs. This group is at high risk to move into high medical needs due to their lack of organization and access to/willingness for primary care. This Editor agrees, but if another factor is observed–profitability–this is likely the least potential of the four. So if you want to get Dr. Y’s attention and maybe some moolah from Alphabet…. From his presentation at the HLTH meeting last week in Las Vegas. CNBC.

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Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.

• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

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